This room, like the doors we came through, was neat and clean, with white walls and a carpeted floor, a high ceiling and sparkling-clean glass windows that let in a sun that had been extinguished for the rest of the disaster zone.
Maybe ten yards on was a big mahogany desk, behind which sat a white man somewhere in his forties. He had a wide face, flattened a little at the ears. His brown hair was neatly coifed, but it was also wiry, giving the impression that, at any minute, it might spring into disarray.
On either side of the substantial desk stood two men dressed in dark suits like Joe’s soldiers.
“You have to give me your guns,” the man in the blue sports jacket said.
“You would not like the way in which you receive them,” Joe’s well-spoken representative rejoined.
“Charcoal Joe,” the man behind the desk announced.
Joe moved to the front of our squad while the leader got to his feet and came around the desk. They approached each other, meeting and shaking hands at the dead center of the office floor.
Diggs’s men moved forward and so did we.
The board was set.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Orem Diggs greeted. “I’ve been wanting to do this for quite a while.”
“Everything in its own time,” the south side gangster intoned. “Everything in its own time.”
Orem smiled and inquired, “What can I do for you, Joe?”
“Easy,” Joe said while looking our host in the eye.
“Yeah,” I said, moving up to stand next to him.
“Tell Mr. Diggs what it is we’re here for.”
I said, “A little bird told me that an Orem Diggs was lookin’ for me and that he wasn’t smiling.”
“Who are you?” Orem asked. “And who’s your little bird?”
“My name is Ezekiel Rawlins,” was all the answer I had as to the source of my interest. “I wanna know what your business is with me.”
The gangster’s eyes sharpened. He studied me in a way that was commonplace for men who made their living outside the scriptures of law. His expression exhibited scorn, contempt backed up by potential violence, mixed in with a desire to acquire knowledge that he had no obligation to reciprocate.
“There’s a woman name of Lutisha James that I would have words with,” he said at last.
“About what?”
He didn’t like being questioned, but his expression seemed to suggest that this was a singular situation.
“I’m looking for a thing that she might know the whereabouts of.”
“What thing?”
“A piece of paper.”
“Did you kill that family?” I just had to ask.
“What family is that?”
“The one in Bel-Air.”
“I haven’t killed nobody,” Diggs said. Then, turning to Joe: “Is that why you’re here? Those people belonged to you?”
“Anybody else you know after Lutisha or this paper?” I asked.
“Why?” the gangster replied. “What’s she got to do with murder?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out. I don’t get behind the slaughter of old people, innocent children, and most women.”
I didn’t mean to sound so angry in my reply. When men like Diggs heard anger pointed in their direction, they got their hackles up.
“Answer him, Diggs,” Charcoal Joe said in a velvet tone. The kind of black velvet that lines the interior of a coffin.
That was the moment of decision. Diggs was a dyed-in-the-wool bad man who made his way west like all the other prospectors, looking for gold. He was a bad man, but Joe had roots in the city that no one else could equal.
Orem glanced at Joe, then exhaled, realizing that he would be taking on an opponent above his weight class.
He said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if anyone else is after her?” I asked.
“Right.”
“How about why they want her?”
He proved he was brave by hesitating before saying, “The paper is a deed that a man named Sasha, now deceased, gave to someone, and that someone gave it to Lutisha before the injured party could get to him.”
“Why give it to her?”
Orem chuckled and said, “Because Lutisha James is both a woman to fear and a woman to trust.”
“What’s the deed to?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, some guy named Sasha gave her this deed?”
Orem studied me again. This time it was less like a predator, more like someone considering a move in an important game of chance.
“Sasha gave the deed to some guy named Hannibal. I guess he was the one supposed to get it to her.”
“Who’s Hannibal?”
Shrugging his shoulders and holding up both hands, he said, “You tell me. Is that all?”
“Only one more question.”
“Shoot.”
“Who did Sasha steal the deed from?”
Smiling broadly, he said, “Waynesmith Von Crudock.”
Shit.
19
After sending his backup men off, Joe joined Fearless and me on a drive down to the Pacific Dining Car on Sixth Street. There was always a place ready for Joe there. He’d helped one of the managers with a problem at some point along the way, earning himself a permanently open table toward the back of the restaurant.
Joe and I ordered prime rib and Fearless asked for a Roquefort salad along with French fries and a side vegetable plate.
“What’s up, Fearless?” I asked.
“What you mean?”
“No meat? No chicken? Not even some shrimp?”
“Naw, man. I met this white girl up at UCLA told me all the bad things meat does and how they basically torture the animals before butcherin’.”
“UCLA?” Joe said. “What you doin’ there?”
“I was... I was... I was,” he said, thinking his way into an answer for the question. “I was livin’ wit’ this girl name of Helen Darcey. She cooked every night, know what I mean? In the kitchen and the bedroom. I was happy as a pig in shit. Then, one day—”
“She wanted you to move in and maybe get married,” I supplied.
Fearless threw up his hands. “You know how I am, Easy. I get calls at any time for things people need. I ain’t no detective or nuthin’, but I’m on the go. I really liked Helen, man, but she wanted a house and a car and a man come home every night when it gets dark. Every night.”
“And when it get dark is when you get goin’,” Joe said.
“Yeah, you boaf right. Anyway, I got this room down on Avalon. It wasn’t big but I don’t need a whole lotta space. There was this two-burner stove in there, and every time I look at it, I’d think about Helen and her fried chicken. Man... I could take that gas stove all apart and put it back together again, but I couldn’t boil water right. So I saw that there was a extension class at UCLA that teach anybody how to cook. So I signed up.”
“That don’t say why you only eatin’ vegetables now,” I said, slipping into the language of my upbringing.
“Naw, man, like I said, that was because’a Delilah.”
“The white girl?”
“Uh-huh. I mean, the first day I got to the class the teacher says that we got to buy this two-hunnert-page book and read it. You know, Easy, I can make it through a letter, read the bettin’ sheet at the races, but a whole book? Uh-uh.”
“But you stayed in the class, right?”
“Yeah. After class Delilah aksed was I gonna buy the book. I didn’t wanna ack like I couldn’t read or nuttin’ so I went with her to the campus book store. Book was fifteen dollars, fifteen. She didn’t have it. So, I said that I’d buy the damn thing, and we could read it together. I figured that she’d keep it when I stopped comin’ to class. But she wanted to meet at the lie-berry the next day and, well, you know — one thing led to another.”